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After Dark: Blackadder Goes Forth to the Polls — Dish and Dishonesty
22 Plays8 days ago
Joshua Paisley speaks with Jem Roberts, author of The True History of Blackadder, about Dish and Dishonesty — the opening episode of Blackadder III and the most political half-hour the show ever produced. The conversation traces how a Robbie Coltrane one-man show about Samuel Johnson accidentally set the whole Georgian series in motion, why an episode recorded one week after Thatcher's 1987 landslide couldn't help but be soaked in electoral cynicism, and how the twin influences of Ben Elton's stand-up and John Lloyd's work on Spitting Image combined to make the hustings scene feel less like a sitcom and more like a puppet show with better dialogue. From the genuinely rotten borough of Dunny-on-the-Wold — with its electorate of one — to the Reform Act of 1832 that eventually swept such absurdities away, and from Prince George's aristocratic indifference to whether any of it matters at all, this episode asks what Blackadder gets right about democracy, what it gets away with, and whether Ben Elton, forty years younger, might finally have gone for the Reform Party joke. to the Polls — Dish and Dishonesty
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Transcript
Introduction to 'After Dark'
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello, my name is Joshua Paisley and welcome back to the Observation podcast series, After Dark. This is where we pick a fictional election from a TV series, novel or movie and flesh it out.
00:00:23
Speaker
September 1987 was quite the time to be alive. Not only did we have a brand new series of the Blackadder gracing our TVs, but Rick Astley was busy sitting at number one spot with Never Gonna Give You Up.
00:00:37
Speaker
I'm sure our listeners can guess we are not going to talk about Rick Ashley's
Spotlight on Blackadder's 'Dish and Dishonesty'
00:00:41
Speaker
hit song. Instead, this podcast will have a look at the classic series Blackadder, focusing on the opening episode of the third season, Dish and Dishonesty.
Interview with Jem Roberts
00:00:51
Speaker
Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming onto the podcast, Jem Roberts, the author of the true history of Blackadder and the tales of Britain, to name a few. Welcome, Jem. How are you doing?
00:01:02
Speaker
Hello, Josh. It's a pleasure indeed.
00:01:06
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit about what you do, Gem, and the book, The True History of Blackadder? Well, the Blackadder book was actually my second of, ah well, several works of comedy history and folklore and god gosh knows what else over the years I've done. um Long story short, um i was a I was a huge fan of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, the radio show.
00:01:28
Speaker
And I did an article and Barry Cryer and Graham Garden basically suggested I turn it into a book, which was all just about preserving that show because I love that show and people spoiled the jokes all the time. So that's the only reason I got into this game. But once into that game,
00:01:45
Speaker
The question was, what do I do next? And the answer was Blackadder, because Blackadder is the one comedy which has always given me this lifelong obsession with comedy, that it's the greatest, you know, greatest form of art that exists. And I am a complete comedy anorak. I'm also a comedy performer and have been for a long time. and a comedy writer, but above all, I am a comedy anorak. And so given the chance, it was a bit bit like a supermarket sweep.
00:02:13
Speaker
It's just like, okay, you write books about comedy. well What book do you want to write? And the answer was Blackadder. It's been the be all and end all. Everything comes together in Blackadder. I mean, the first episode has Peter Cook in it. So, you know, that kind of shows all the best comedy stories begin with Peter Cook. So, uh, It's, you know, my my most dearly beloved show. And the one that we're talking about now, Blackadder III, that was the point at which, as a child, I sort of first started to watch Blackadder.
00:02:43
Speaker
Yes, so I was gonna ask, when did this love for, because you seem unbelievably passionate about Blackadder, which is fantastic. When did this love for Blackadder really come to you? Well, in writing the book, which ah it came out in 2012, so it's ah it's been out for a while now, but ah in writing the book, i I learned exactly, absolutely pinpoint to the evening when I first fell in love with Blackadder. What happened was when Blackadder III, as you just said, came out in September of 1987,
00:03:11
Speaker
The BBC repeated Blackadder 2 at the end of the summer leading up to it. So it went from straight from Blackadder 2 into Blackadder 3rd. And I remember being nine years old and it being late summer and coming in from playing with my friends and us turning on the TV, me and my brother, and saying... What's this weird Elizabethan looking thing? Oh, it's the funny faced man from that not the nine o'clock shoot news show that we were too young to watch. Let's stick with it.
00:03:38
Speaker
And we fell in love. And then the way that it then went into the third series of Blackadder, that was really when Blackadder just went on to a completely different level. When they did the second series, they were scrabbling to for their lives, basically. They were nearly axed.
00:03:54
Speaker
The first series was a disaster to do. The second series just scraped by. And this series, which which started with dis and dis Dish and Dishonesty, this was when it absolutely began to soar. And it wasn't it's not just me. It's suddenly the the viewing figures just absolutely...
00:04:12
Speaker
boomed and Tony Robinson himself says that it was only after sort of September 1987 when these shows started to go out that he found that he couldn't walk down the street anymore without being mobbed for being bouldering so this was a very very special time the start of autumn 1987 And actually, I was going to ask you this a bit later, but since it's already come up about the third season kind of booming, I was going to ask, why do you think the producers, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, chose to parody an election in the first episode of the third season?
Parody of Elections in Blackadder
00:04:45
Speaker
What's what's the reasoning there?
00:04:47
Speaker
Well, the whole impetus for the Georgian period, because obviously they skipped a whole whole century. they you know They only did the Cavaliers later on as an afterthought. The whole thing started with Robbie Coltrane, who did a one-man show playing Samuel Johnson.
00:05:04
Speaker
And literally, Ben and Richard went to see the show and thought, ooh, what if Blackadder set fire to his dictionary? And it all went from there. So the whole thing stemmed from that. But once they had their period... they then so had to sit down and say, well, what the six episodes, what are the six things about this period that people know that pete that we can take the piss out of, basically? And high on their list, it seems, was the politics, which is really the birth of, you know, our...
00:05:35
Speaker
disgusting and distorted form of democracy. This is where this is where we went started to go wrong as a society, where we said, oh, let's get these buggers in wigs over here and these in wigs over here, and let's kind of part the house in the middle and just shout at each other for 300 years. This is where Britain started to go wrong. Sorry, I'm getting onto my high horse now. This is not about Black Adam. Anyway, but but they're right. This was really the birth of of modern democracy, as, you know, sort of post-restoration They really this is when the Whigs and the Tories began to kind of give you this idea of, you know, a two party meaningless democracy that we're still stuck with. um
00:06:15
Speaker
So it was on a list. And I think ah it was interesting that it became the first episode edition, Dish and Dishonesty, this big, the most political thing that Blackadder ever did.
00:06:26
Speaker
Because it was actually the third one... Is this episode the most political, would you say? Oh, absolutely, without question. I mean, there's a lot of the politics of the times in that you could say in the first series, the witch smeller persuivant. That's a big courtroom drama. it's a lot of that episode is set in a courtroom. But that's the the politics of the 15th century where they're you know shouting witch at each other.
00:06:49
Speaker
Whereas this is sort of the politics of of the 18th century. But the reason is, if nothing else... um originally it was actually it was actually the third episode to be recorded, even though it was the first. They were always shown out of sequence.
00:07:02
Speaker
So it was recorded in the middle of September. They started at the start of... No, no, that's um June. June, sorry. Very silly there. It was June. They were all done in June.
00:07:12
Speaker
And this was in mid-June. And the episode we're talking about, originally called Rotten Burrows, but it ah became known as Dish and Dishonesty. The reason it's so political, Josh, is because...
00:07:25
Speaker
it was recorded exactly one week after Thatcher's 1987 triumph in the general election. So they couldn't have been more absolutely soaked in, you know, elections and politics. And it's it's Ben Elton, isn't it It's a little bit of politics. At the same time as this, he was also presenting Saturday Live on Channel 4 and constantly talking about the the politics of the time.
00:07:51
Speaker
And this episode is ah In a way, it's got the most anachronisms in it. One thing that Ben Elton and Richard Curtis always swore for Blackadder was to avoid comedy anachronisms like, oh, what time is it? Oh, we haven't got a watch yet because it hasn't been invented. They avoided all those kind of jokes. But this episode has quite a few of them, which is very unusual for Blackadder, but it's because it was so topical. They were living in this topical time. And of course, the other most important thing, apart apart from, i mean, Richard Curtis, I'm sure, could give ah could leave the politics alone altogether. That's Richard Curtis. Ben Elton is known for his little bit of politics. But the number one person involved in this episode, Josh, who really kind of influenced the whole thing,
00:08:40
Speaker
is John Lloyd, who at the same time was producing Spitting Image. And as well as being the most topical Blackadder episode, Dish and Dishonesty is also... i was watching it last night to prepare for this interview, and it struck me. i didn't say this in a book, but it really is the closest to Spitting Image that Blackadder ever gets. It's like John Lloyd had these two main jobs that he was balancing, And normally the two couldn't be more separate. Blackadder was one world, Spitting Image was another. But when you see the big central scene in Dish and Dishonesty, which is the Husting scene, it's just like a Spitting Image sketch. He was sort of really doing much the same job as he was in his other job in this one, right down to the strange sound effects of sheep that you hear in the background of the Hustings and things like that. And shouting yeah and shouting out stuff.
00:09:32
Speaker
And, Jem, do you feel as if, as you say, this is the most political episode of Blackadder? Do you think Blackadder has credit to go into the political sphere? Or does it almost discredit the series that they do enter into there when they've almost kind of taken a step back?
00:09:46
Speaker
Well, they do often say that one of the reasons that Blackadder has... kept being loved by the big british people and all over the world for so long is because of the lack of topicality um ah you know it's faulty towers has some terrible costumes and their terrible clothes and some terrible attitudes that you now have to put warnings for before showing faulty towers which uh richard curtis saw as you know the the greatest sitcom ever made but actually Blackadder has greater lasting power than Fawlty Towers because of its lack of topicality. So actually, this episode is the closest they veered towards risking that kind of um you know becoming dated. There's nothing more dated than a topical joke. from you know You don't hear a lot of Ben Elton's really political, topical stand-up stuff anymore from those times. But Blackadder actually they dared with this episode, which it's a little bit...
00:10:44
Speaker
It's a little bit cheesy. It's a little bit cringy, actually, which is very, very unusual Blackadder that you ever feel a cringe. But most people won't notice, for instance, the line um when Blackadder asks Baldrick to to become a member of Parliament. He turns to Baldrick and says, I'd like you to go back to your kitchen sink, you see, and prepare for government.
00:11:07
Speaker
Now, at the time, the politically clued up would have known about David Steele's speech to um to the what was it with then? The SDP? or Yeah, I think it was the SDP, was it? Anyway, his famous speech. Go back to your constituents, constituencies and prepare for a government, which has become, you know, one of the most cringeworthy speeches in certainly 1980s British politics. And it was a direct allusion towards that.
00:11:31
Speaker
And thank God most people who watch this episode don't realise, they don't pick up on that, because that's exactly the kind of dated, topical joke that Blackadder did without, which is why people still love Blackadder
Timeless Humor of Blackadder
00:11:45
Speaker
to this day. Because it is generally non-specific. It's about the characters, and it's about the ancient histories. This one made a little joke, much more of a joke about comparing then and now. It does it a lot, actually. There's also jokes about...
00:11:59
Speaker
um The Times has really gone downhill recently. It was just after Murdoch had bought The Times. um And the yeah, the amount of topical jokes in this one episode is probably 10 times more than any other episode of Blackadder in any period.
00:12:15
Speaker
And, Jem, for our listeners who maybe are unsure about Blackadder, we've kind of gone off scripts a little bit there, which is a really good conversation. But if you had to summarise Blackadder in a minute for people who had no idea about it, how would you do it?
00:12:30
Speaker
Oh, ah if it's all of Blackadder, it's about a British dynasty of bastards. That's the whole point. Going back originally to medieval times through to the First World War, it's different reincarnations of the same family who sneer at the world around them and they're surrounded by idiots and stinking servants.
00:12:49
Speaker
And that's basically Blackadder. But I think with this one, with this episode, this was a way of showing, as I say, them wanting to get more comedy out of comparing the modern day with their period of history. And by going with the politics, as I say, it just gave them huge scope for doing that.
00:13:10
Speaker
And for a quick synopsis of the actual episode itself for our listeners, um the episode kind of begins with a speech from William Pitt the Younger, um who becomes prime minister at just the age of 24 in real life, but he's kind of depicted as a schoolboy in the series. So he identifies Britain's three enemies of state. Can you remember the three enemies of state, Jim, that he identifies?
00:13:33
Speaker
Oh, yes. um Napoleon. Yes. Yes. His old geography master, Banana Breath something or other. And most importantly of all, which is the whole thing that drives the whole episode, is the Prince Regent.
00:13:49
Speaker
And like can you remember how much he spent on socks? Is this... oh Now, now you you you you take my Anorak gold star away from me there. No, I don't remember that much. Thankfully. so i'm The Prince Regent managed to spend £59,000 socks. pool And so, as you say...
00:14:08
Speaker
yeah And still we can't find his socks anywhere. it's one This series is so bizarre in that people just accept it when they watch it. um But Hugh Laurie is playing the biggest, fattest king or ruler in the history of our country. This enormous, obese blob and this skinny, tall Hugh Laurie. And everyone just goes with it. It's bizarre.
00:14:32
Speaker
And so the Prince Regent and Blackadder need only one more vote to cling to power as the Commons is balanced. And Sir Talbot Buximley, which I think firstly is a great name, is the man to save the Regent, claiming to the Prince, I care not a jot that you are the son of a certified sauerkraut sucking loon. The fact is you are the Regent appointed by God.
00:14:54
Speaker
And so surely victory is at the door of the Regent. However, Buxton Lee spectacularly dies mid rant. And it yes yeah, the Regent and Blackadder are back in the troubles. So to the luck of the Regent, Buxton Lee seat is a Dunny on the world, which is a rotten borough.
00:15:12
Speaker
I'm wondering, Jem, can you just explain to the audience Rotten Borough. It's interesting you asked me to do that because that was exactly the problem facing Ben Elton and Richard Curtis when they wrote this episode, because they must have known a bit about, you know, the dodgy politics of the Regency period.
00:15:33
Speaker
But they needed to have the audience understand that, which is exactly what you just asked me to do. And they went to John Lloyd and they said, we can't do this. It's boring. What, what we got to stop and have a history lesson on rotten boroughs and how, you know, the, you know, the electorate is controlled by the landowner and all this kind of stuff. And so, and this is terribly interesting to me, if nobody else, this episode contains the most written for it by John Lloyd himself.
00:16:02
Speaker
He was the producer. He kept, out I mean, what he did ah famously is the scripts were obviously written by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis. And then the cast would get together and he called it plumping. They all worked on their own lines. They spent hours. they They absolutely drove everyone else insane, going mad hour after hour working on these scripts together. But what was...
00:16:25
Speaker
Unheard of was John Lloyd, the producer, sitting down and writing. That did not happen. It was not his job. But in this case, he is proud to admit that he wrote the entire scene which explains about Rottenboroughs. The whole scene with the Prince George going... to like ah like like like like like like like What was the chicken impression he made of, sir? um And he did that to just show Richard and Ben...
00:16:50
Speaker
that it could be done in a funny way and quickly and that it's sort of the whole the whole plot revolves around that. I think ah a rotten borough from what I found is, correct me if I'm wrong, but a parliamentary constituency that has the right to elect an MP to the House of Commons However, hardly anyone actually who's eligible to vote lives in this constituency. So what you could have, you could have one person electing someone to become an MP.
00:17:19
Speaker
And this could be the same, an MP for a booming industrial city. So that at the start of the episode, there a very funny claim when Blackadder is saying that Manchester has the population of 60,000, but an electoral roll of three.
00:17:33
Speaker
yeah And so that's kind of playing on what a Rottenborough actually is. So they're in a situation now, aren't they? Blackadder and the Prince Regent where they need a candidate to put up.
00:17:44
Speaker
And so they put up what is Baldrick. Can you explain who Baldrick is for the audience, please, Jeff? He's Blackadder's dog's body. He's the lowest of the low. He's the butler's sidekick and kicking stall.
00:17:58
Speaker
The by-election is presented to mimic modern day TV coverage with a running commentary and interviews. Blackadder steps in as returning officer to announce the results after the previous ah previous officer had brutally stabbed himself in the stomach while shaving.
00:18:13
Speaker
Baldrick wins by a staggering 16,472 votes, all cast by Blackadder himself, explains the number is simply reflects how strongly he feels about Baldrick's policies.
00:18:25
Speaker
Once in Parliament, Baldrick is cornered by Pitt and manipulated to vote for the Regent's abolition. Disaster happens as Blackadder has one last chance turning to the House of Lords where it convinces the Regent to appoint a young man in your service who has done a sterling work to Lordship and proposing bribes of 400,000 to shore up support in the Lords.
00:18:48
Speaker
The Regent, however, appoints Baldrick as the Lord and gives him the 400,000 pounds. What does he do with pounds, ah He buys the biggest turnip in the entire kingdom.
00:19:00
Speaker
This is also where turnips take over in Blackadder lore at this stage. And it's interesting, i I was saying last night, where again, sort of watching this, this very unusual Blackadder in that it just ends.
00:19:14
Speaker
Blackadder, as far as we're aware, at the end of this first episode of the series, is about to get murdered at the very end of the episode. Yeah, you have no idea how the Lords vote, do you? No, indeed. Well, I mean...
00:19:24
Speaker
I know you're going to be talking to Simon, who played Pitt, and I'd be very interested to learn if there was a different ending, because it has all the feel of of they cut five minutes off the end for time and that there was some kind of ah special ending. But I couldn't tell because the script at the BBC archives in Reading, sadly, didn't have any of that stuff in it.
00:19:46
Speaker
One thing that I noticed in the episode was actually obviously the episode parodies British elections during that period. And obviously the Rottenborough is the clear example of that. But you also have restrictions on eligibility to votes. You have other parodies, including the House of Lords, where the Prince Regent makes Baldrick a Lord merely by putting on a gown and signing a document.
00:20:08
Speaker
How do you feel that this episode parodies elections from that time? um Well, again, they just couldn't help it because they were so steeped at that time, it having been a week from the 1987 elections and just immured and all that constant stuff. I mean, you some of it doesn't even come across on screen. In the original script, they really kind of try to nail down That Hustings thing, the the idea being that you were supposed to at all times see the window through which Vincent Hanna. Vincent Hanna, again, it's another joke that will be a lost on a lot of people who watch that the Vincent Hanna character in that Hustings was a real, genuine BBC political presenter. And he's playing his great, great, great, great grandfather. But in the script, he was supposed to be literally doing it through a window to a crowd.
00:20:59
Speaker
And that was their version of television in in the 18th century. um But again, it's more of these sort of semi-anachronistic little references to the world that they were all actually living in.
00:21:12
Speaker
And so when when you look at so many jabs that are in Blackadder, you just mentioned a few there. Do you think they still have resonance today as they did in the late 80s? No, we are in a difficult period to answer that question because the thing certainly the the status quo as I've known it throughout my life seems to be disintegrating in the most... It's weird it's weird because I've spent my whole life desperately waiting for that system to disintegrate. And now it's disintegrating, but in the worst possible way. and Not disintegrating in the way that I hoped it would. It's moving in exactly the opposite direction to the the way that I would hope our politics might have moved in the 21st century, shall we say. So it is really, ah it's certainly a lot to do with the old two-party system. And, you know, you could easily change Whigs and Tories to Tory and Labour of the nineteen eighty s to thatcher and kinnock um i think it's steeped in all that kind of stuff I think Tony Robinson, who, ah you know, as most people know, was a member of Labour and very politically active within Labour and still is a great supporter of Labour's.
00:22:21
Speaker
you know, Sir Keir Starmer's new, new, new Labour, he's still, you know, very much part of that team. Getting back to the the episode at hand, how actually do you think, from your research, the presentation of the election, how accurate do you think that actually was for the time?
00:22:42
Speaker
Oh, not at all. I'm sure it wasn't at all. I think that that's the whole point, isn't it? It's Blackadder history, which, you know, they're very proud of never of doing the minimum research. The first time they thought they'd pick up a book to check anything was when they were working on one about the First World War. And then they thought out of respect, we need to make sure that we don't. you know, go too far from the the actuality of what happened here. But for the other series, they absolutely gloried in just working off their vague memories of Lady Bird books from their childhoods. Literally, that was the research done for each Blackadder historical period. And I remember talking to Tony Robinson, actually, about Blackadder III when I was writing this book.
00:23:24
Speaker
And some of the interesting things that bubble beneath the surface in Blackadder III that a lot of people don't appreciate is um Tony was saying, well, people didn't really know much about that period. And I thought, well, that's that's nonsense. A lot of things were happening at the end of the 18th century. The, you know, War of Independence in um in France and America. It's a very popular period.
00:23:45
Speaker
But... The actuality of of those times and the the the history it makes no sense at all because obviously the George IV didn't become regent until till the 19th century anyway. So the regency period is completely all the way through. There's no way of trying to match it up to the real dates or anything like that. It's a bit the the equivalent of Hugh Laurie being such a skinny, tall man playing this big, fat... george the fourth you know it's the equivalent of that that is so opposite to the reality of the history um but as a reference for the listeners tony robinson is the actor who played baldrick yeah yeah sorry about that um yeah yeah but uh but yeah strangely as as a part of this way that people are sort of clueless about the period that this was set in um
00:24:41
Speaker
that The Blackadder III has more famous characters in it than any other series of Blackadder. So if you watch Blackadder II, there's literally only sort of Walter Raleigh and obviously Queen Elizabeth, and generally there are no famous people from the Tudor times in it, and there's only maybe Field Marshal Haig in the fourth series, there's only ever one or two famous names. A lot of historical period comedy, it's all about, oh, here's a famous celebrity from this period that you don't know.
00:25:13
Speaker
That is not the way that Blackadder works, except Blackadder III, in which every episode is absolutely packed with all the famous people from um from the late 19th century.
00:25:26
Speaker
And why is that so, Gem? Well, this is what I was debating with with with tony robin with Sir Tony Robinson, um and what whether it was because, in his view, that people didn't have anything to latch onto in that period. So that's why suddenly you'd have Byron and Shelley and everyone and there with Dr Johnson. And the fact that having Byron and Shelley with Dr Johnson in one cafe is the equivalent of HG Wells hanging around at the cavern with the Beatles in historical terms. That that never happened. you know It's so far. They're absolutely miles from the actuality. um But I think they just threw they threw everything at this series. It really was like the the kitchen sink.
00:26:08
Speaker
Thinking about the legacy of Blackadder, where do you think looking at more satirical shows of recent times, I'm thinking in the thick of it, I guess you've got Yes Minister around the same
Blackadder's Influence on Political Comedy
00:26:19
Speaker
time. Where do you think, where do you see Blackadder and maybe Dish and Dishon Dishonesty's legacy pull through that?
00:26:26
Speaker
Um, it is really the only, you know, ah but despite what I said about which smell of Persuivant, it is, as you know, the most political or party political episode of Blackadder. And I think that may also have something to do with the fact that at the same time, Rick Mayall was creating Alan Bastard and the New Statesman.
00:26:47
Speaker
um In the 1980s, it's incredible how there were the all of the the greatest sitcom bastards all at once. Blackadder being the number one all-time sitcom bastard.
00:26:59
Speaker
But then you also had Alan Bastard at the same time, and then Arnold Rimmer in Red Dwarf in the future. And all of these characters were all created and put on screen at the same time. And it's almost like Bastard could have been a descendant of Blackadder. They used a lot of Blackadder tricks in the new statesman.
00:27:19
Speaker
um So I think in a way, it's it i mean, that's why this podcast would be absolutely so interesting, Josh, because I think actually dish and dishonesty and blackout of being political is not what it's remembered for.
00:27:34
Speaker
it's it's It's almost ah an exception to the rule. And that is, from a comedy anorak's point of view, makes it 10 times more interesting, which is why you know it's great to talk about it now. But I think...
00:27:47
Speaker
In the long run, to most people, it's one of the most forgotten episodes. Have any anecdotes about maybe real historical figures that influence the production or more generally throughout the third season of Blackadder?
00:28:01
Speaker
I don't think so. As I say, that though for this series, it really was Samuel Johnson as played by Robbie Coltrane. That was the impetus for that. And everything came from that. Well, I think each series, you could say that it was all about one figure. So the first series, it was about Richard III or Henry the seventh Second one, all right, it's Queen Elizabeth I, and everything else comes from that. In this series, you could say it was about George IV or the Prince Regent, but it's not. It was all because of Samuel Johnson and everything else extrapolated from that. And as I say, they they threw in every possible allusion to celebrities of that period just to try and get across to the audience...
00:28:42
Speaker
you know, what life was like in their in their ideas in Regent times. But ah for this episode, I think it was just a combination of having decided on that period,
00:28:53
Speaker
And I think if you watch so much of Blackadder, and again, this is something that is completely lost on most audiences, so much of Blackadder is directly spoofing BBC historical drama of the 70s and 80s. And it's quite shocking. Sometimes you go back and you see series that have never been repeated. Obviously, with the second series, it was Elizabeth R, which was very celebrated with Glenda Jackson. But there was also a series about the Prince Regent,
00:29:20
Speaker
ah which came out in, I think, the early 80s. And I think they will have watched those shows and they would definitely have been, you know, a little BBC studio which had been turned into the House of Commons and there were Whigs and there were Tories and there's all of that. I mean, it is... I mean, you get the same thing with The Madness of King George. So much of that film or that that play, there's a lot set in the House of Commons in these times. And I think it's because it really was...
00:29:48
Speaker
the birth, the creation of of of this this form of democracy, which we farmed out to the whole planet, and which has been a disaster, in my opinion.
00:30:01
Speaker
how Blackadder focuses on a certain time period. I think it's really interesting how they actually get a lot right about the electoral processes. So I hear the audience asking whether rotten boroughs that exist. Thankfully they do not, but that was not until the reform act of 1832 that seek to tackle some of the worst abuses of the old electoral system.
00:30:22
Speaker
So you have to name a few abolishing the rotten boroughs redistributing seats to represent industrial towns and cities. expanding the electorate by lowering property requirements.
00:30:33
Speaker
these often This often is actually seen as the beginning of Britain's long journey towards a democratic parliamentary system. Coming to the end of our conversation, Gem, which would be really interesting. If this episode were created today, what modern election habits do you think Blackadder would attack in the same way that they did in Dish and Dish and Dish?
00:30:53
Speaker
Well, certainly, I'd say that the word reform now has an extremely different connotation to what to what it had at the time. But even having said, you know, that reform, even then involved things like the clearances and ah and a lot of great injustices.
00:31:08
Speaker
you know, there was a feeling that reform was needed. Certainly reform was needed in terms of the electorate, you know, to go. it's ah Don't get me wrong. It's certainly good to go from having, you know, ah Manchester having an electoral roll of three to having electoral roll of millions. um So there are good, there have been good reforms and reform can be a good thing. But I think we're entering into a period where the term reform is going to be a dirty word for a very long time. Do you think Blackadder would even and even enter into that, use that word reform in that sense of the party? Do you think it would even enter into that? Because you said that they weren't so overtly introduced into the system. I think Ben Elton might be moved to do that if he was... ah
00:31:54
Speaker
if he was 40 years younger and and around writing today. I think Ben might go for that joke. But like I say, the one thing about Blackadder is they really worked hard to avoid doing too much direct topical all illusion comparing today to then. And that's why Dish and Dishonesty really sticks out as the number one most topical Blackadder episode of all.
Conclusion and Invitation
00:32:21
Speaker
Wow, I think we'll finish on that. Thank you very much, Gem, for joining me. Wherever and however you are tuning in for this episode of the After Dark series, thank you for listening.
00:32:32
Speaker
If you found yourself interested in our discussion and want to hear more, stay tuned for more episodes. We're available on YouTube and all your streaming apps at observationspodcast.com. Perfect. Thank you very much, Gem. Have a good Thank you, Josh.